The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc Holliday, the frail 26-year-old dentist who has just opened an office at No. 24, Dodge House.

Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral

A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands.... That was America in 1881. All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26, when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest.

A Thread of Grace

It is September 8, 1943, and Claudette Blum is learning Italian with a suitcase in her hand. She and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to be safe at last, now that the Italians have broken with Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies. The Blums will soon discover that Italy is anything but peaceful, as it becomes, overnight, an open battleground.

Dreamers of the Day

A 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as an historic Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie - enters into the company of the historic luminaries.

The Earp Brothers: Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp

Of all the colorful characters that inhabited the West during the 19th century, the most famous of them all is Wyatt Earp (1848-1929), who has long been regarded as the embodiment of the Wild West. Considered the "toughest and deadliest gunman of his day", Earp symbolized the swagger, the heroism, and even the lawlessness of the West.

The Sparrow

Emilio Sandoz is a remarkable man, a living saint and Jesuit priest who undergoes an experience so harrowing and profound that it makes him question the existence of God. This experience - the first contact between human beings and intelligent extraterrestrial life - begins with a small mistake and ends in a horrible catastrophe.

Children of God

The only member of the original mission to the planet Rakhat to return to Earth, Father Emilio Sandoz has barely begun to recover from his ordeal when the Society of Jesus calls upon him for help in preparing for another mission to Alpha Centauri. Despite his objections and fear, he cannot escape his past or the future.

The Nations

It is the year 1885. A notorious band of outlaws known as the Larson Gang has been terrorizing Arkansas, Missouri, and the Nations for years. Judge Issac Parker, the Hanging Judge, orders an all-out concerted effort to capture the gang and bring them to justice.

Across the Red: The Nations, Book 4

Between the Indian Nations and Texas lies an area on the south side of the Red River that was once the winter camp for the likes of the notorious guerrillas William Clarke Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson and later, the James Gang - known as Delaware Bend.

The Invention of Fire: A Novel

Though he is one of England's most acclaimed intellectuals, John Gower is no stranger to London's wretched slums and dark corners, and he knows how to trade on the secrets of the kingdom's most powerful men. When the bodies of 16 unknown men are found in a privy, the sheriff of London seeks Gower's help. The men's wounds - ragged holes created by an unknown object - are unlike anything the sheriff's men have ever seen. Tossed into the sewer, the bodies were meant to be found.

Man Hunter

Was it justice... or revenge? What drove a simple farmer to set out on an impossible quest after a gang of bloodthirsty killers that raped and murdered his wife and slit his small son's throat? Their trail led him halfway across the country and deep into Mexico. One by one he tracked them down and brought them to justice, sometimes at the end of a short rope, more often in front of his fast guns, and he didn't care which.

The Fatal Flame

No one in 1840s New York likes fires, but Copper Star Timothy Wilde least of all. So when an arsonist with an agenda begins threatening Alderman Robert Symmes, a corrupt and powerful leader high in the Tammany Hall ranks, Wilde isn't thrilled to be involved. His reservations escalate further when his brother, Valentine, announces that he'll be running against Symmes in the upcoming election, making both himself and Timothy a host of powerful enemies.

The Mapmaker's Children: A Novel

When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad's leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can't bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.

Nate Grisham: Black Mountain Man

After a storm tossed night in the Rockies, Nate Grisham encounters a lost Army captain and his family far from any civilized town. And something doesn't seem right about his story of having been ambushed by Blackfoot warriors. After escorting them to the nearest Army post he discovers the Army is looking for an imposter - and murderer. W. R. Benton and newcomer Grady Clark team up to bring another rip-roaring mountain man western to life in this new book.

The Book of Aron: A Novel

Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar and unhappy young boy whose family is driven by the German onslaught from the Polish countryside into Warsaw and slowly battered by deprivation, disease, and persecution.

Little Big Man

The story of Jack Crabbe, raised by both a white man and a Cheyenne chief. As a Cheyenne, Jack ate dog, had four wives, and saw his people butchered by General Custer's soldiers. As a white man, he participated in the slaughter of the buffalo and tangled with Wyatt Earp.

Flintlock: Gut-Shot

Drawn to a killing ground... Ten thousand dollars. That's the bounty on the head of the most hated man in Texas - the man Flintlock has been hired to guard. The crime was the brutal murder of a young schoolteacher. The verdict was not guilty for lack of evidence. And the suspected killer's first guard was murdered by a shotgun blast.

The Son

Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, The Son is an utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American West through the lives of the McCulloughs, an ambitious family as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim. Spring, 1849: Eli McCullough is 13 years old when a marauding band of Comanches takes him captive. Brave and clever, Eli quickly adapts to life among the Comanches, learning their ways and waging war against their enemies, including white men - which complicates his sense of loyalty and understanding of who he is.

Violent Sunday

Frank Morgan's reputation as a gunslinger has made him a magnet for trouble. Everywhere he goes, young men feel the need to challenge him and end up paying with their lives. But when one duel ends in disaster - an innocent young woman is shot - Frank's relationship with his best friend, Ranger Tyler Beaumont, is shattered.

Incidents Among the Savages

The year was 1803. It was a time when the West was not only frontier, it was the undiscovered country. It was the time of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, before the trains of Prairie Schooners and settlers, before cowboys or cattle drives, before Colonel Colt and the six-shooter, and nearly a three quarters of a century before George Armstrong Custer and his men were killed at Little Big Horn. It was a time when the western fur trade was new, and only the first of the mountain men had left the Mississippi behind on their journey into the wilderness.

Savage Texas: Rebel Yell

In 1866 the border between the US and Mexico is a hotbed of gunrunners, mercenaries, and the emperor of Mexico's spies, saboteurs, and double agents. On top of which West Texas is plagued by Comanche warriors. Into this mix ride two massive gangs of the meanest, most kill-happy bunch of bloodthirsty ravagers to ever draw breath.

Charley Sunday's Texas Outfit

In the waning days of the Wild West, Texas rancher Charles Abner Sunday wants to leave a legacy of the Old West to his grandson Henry-Ellis. Sunday buys 300 head of Texas longhorn cattle and leads his grandson - along with a ragtag crew of cronies and misfits - on an old-fashioned cross-country cattle drive. As the drovers struggle to push their 300 charges across a swiftly changing American frontier, they butt heads with a Colorado meatpacker hell-bent on living in the wild, wild past.

Dead Man's Walk

In Dead Man's Walk, Gus and Call are not yet 20, young men coming of age in the days when Texas was still an independent republic. Enlisting as Texas Rangers under a land pirate who wants to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans, Gus and Call experience their first great adventure in the barren great plains landscape, in which arbitrary violence is the rule -- whether from nature, or from the Indians whose territory they must cross in order to reach New Mexico.<

The Marauders: A Novel

When the BP oil spill devastates the Gulf Coast, those who made a living by shrimping find themselves in dire straits. For the oddballs and lowlifes who inhabit the sleepy, working-class bayou town of Jeannette, these desperate circumstances serve as the catalyst that pushes them to enact whatever risky schemes they can dream up to reverse their fortunes. At the center of it all is Gus Lindquist, a pill-addicted, one-armed treasure hunter obsessed with finding the lost treasure of pirate Jean Lafitte.

Delicious Foods: A Novel

Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs and quickly forms an addiction. One day she disappears without a trace.

Audible Editor Reviews

Mary Doria Russell's last two novels have been works of historical fiction, and Doc demonstrates that she's clearly found her groove in the genre. The premise of the book is at once both iconic and imaginative, treating the beginnings of friendship between Doc Holliday and the Earp clan several years before all the fuss at the O.K. Corral. These are not hardened lawmen, but struggling young men with simple dreams of financial stability and good health. Mark Bramhall does an impeccable job with the voice work, taking on these enormously well known characters and adding a sensitive depth of uncertainty. After all, at this moment in history, John Henry Holliday is just a dentist who plays a bit of poker, and Wyatt Earp is merely a part-time officer of the peace who is hoping to breed racehorses. They are thrown together out of concern for a mutual acquaintance, John Horse Sanders, a mixed-race man who died in a fire but who may have been murdered before the fire got started.

It's a straightforward Western mystery with a surprising amount of intricate narration. Mark Bramhall is a prize when it comes to character acting, so he handles the various Southern accents, from Georgia to Texas to Kansas, without even breaking a sweat. But everyone knows Doc Holliday died of consumption at a young age. Doc's dialogue is riddled with hacking, coughing, spluttering and spitting. Bramhall manages to insert all of these credibly, yet without disrupting the flow of the story or ruining Doc's many profound punch lines. It's particularly a treat to hear him voicing Doc's fiery gypsy whore, Kate. Switching between Western and Hungarian accents seems difficult enough, but Kate is also fluent in a number of other languages, and Bramhall delivers the French and Latin with an easy grace. Russell's slow and steady narrative is bound to delight, but as with all good Westerns, it's the drawling sound of the place that will make it truly enchanting. Megan Volpert

Publisher's Summary

The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc Holliday, the frail 26-year-old dentist who has just opened an office at No. 24, Dodge House.

Beautifully educated, born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday is given an awful choice at the age of 22: die within months in Atlanta or leave everyone and everything he loves in the hope that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Young, scared, lonely, and sick, he arrives on the rawest edge of the Texas frontier just as an economic crash wrecks the dreams of a nation. Soon, with few alternatives open to him, Doc Holliday is gambling professionally; he is also living with Mária Katarina Harony, a high-strung Hungarian whore with dazzling turquoise eyes, who can quote Latin classics right back at him. Kate makes it her business to find Doc the high-stakes poker games that will support them both in high style. It is Kate who insists that the couple travel to Dodge City, because “That’s where the money is.”

And that is where the unlikely friendship of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp really begins - before Wyatt Earp is the prototype of the square-jawed, fearless lawman; before Doc Holliday is the quintessential frontier gambler; before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their names forever in American frontier mythology - when neither man wanted fame or deserved notoriety.

What the Critics Say

"Fact and mythmaking converge as Russell creates a Dodge City filled with nuggets of surprising history, a city so alive readers can smell the sawdust and hear the tinkling of saloon pianos....Filled with action and humor yet philosophically rich and deeply moving - a magnificent read." (Kirkus)

We are listening to "Doc" and the combination of great writing and a gifted narrator equals an amazing experience. This book is an example of how a well written book can be elevated to heights that cannot be reached by just reading the written word. Congratulations to the author for having such elite writing skills and to the narrator and his perfect voice. Thank you.

I have always admired Mary Doria Russell's writing and was not disappointed with this latest story of Doc. She brings a depth of character to Doc from her imagination and paints pictures with words that make you able to visualize the place, time and character of the people in Doc's life. The reader Mark Bramhall, makes the story come alive. His ability to play the part of each of the characters is very good. I will pay attention to other books he reads. It is a turn-off to have a reader that sounds false when portraying, for instance, females. Mr. Bramhall is believable and non-offending.

This was so much more than just GREAT, a thoroughly readable, (OK, listenable,) book that adhered to the verifiable historical facts, even when those facts put our hero in a not so heroic light...Excellent!

This is a great story -- so well written, all the characters are rich, and the weaving of the story is absolutely enchanting. As wonderful as that is the narrator's skill and talent makes it breathtaking. I've listened to this book several times and am more impressed with the narrator's talent each time.
I will look for this author and especially look for this narrator in the future.

Doc was recommended highly and since I'm not much into Westerns, I hesitated, yet so pleased I stepped into the world of Dodge City. I was quickly ensconced in the lives of Doc Holiday, Kate, the Earp Brothers and a cast of characters so vividly described by the author, it was like I stepped back in time.Mary Doria Russell has an exceptional writing talent of depicting the characters and locations so that one feels as though you are visiting Western towns of the late 1800's with the likes of cowpokes, saloons and small town activities all the while demonstrating events which influenced John Henry Holiday's life.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Doc?

There are too many memorable moments within this novel to note which makes this book so wonderful! You just need to experience for yourself!

What about Mark Bramhall’s performance did you like?

Mark Bramhall compliments the story by capturing a slow Georgia drawl while easily transitioning to an Irish brogue or female Hungarian dialect. His gasping for air as he read of the ongoing coughing spells plagued by Doc Holiday emphasized the pain and torment experienced every day in the life of this young man.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

It is rare when a novel comes along where I wish life's surroundings would stop and allow me to just participate in another world and Doc is one of those books.

I was very impressed with the story and the narration. Something for almost anyone in this book, western history, American history, romance, philosophy and a lot of truth. I was particularly taken by the writers knowledge on the truth about the civil war (although the book only just touches on the civil war) - she has obviously not fallen for the politically correct data on the subject.

This fine book is not a genre "western" - it is rather historical fiction of an exciting kind as it takes two of the mythic figures of the west: Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp and weaves a story of their lives in Dodge City - before the famous Tombstone years.The book is full of incident and themes, dealing with pride, the brutal lives of many women in the cattle towns, revenge, loyalty to friends and the ravages of disease also - in this case Doc's rampant and movingly described tuberculosis. But there is plenty of humour and satire and wit in the story too, especially in the ironic way Doc speaks and acts - as he deals cards at Faro tables, interacts with his fearsome paramour Big Nose Kate, practices sophisticated dentistry on Wyatt Earp's front teeth and avenges a great wrong.The only other western-set novel I know that has a similar depth is Ron Hansen's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", and that book has a pace and momentum which "Doc" occasionally lacks. Hansen's novel would make a great audiobook too.But "Doc" is a really fine "listen" - quite brilliantly read by Mark Bramhall, whose range of voices and accents is superb and who narrates at just the right speed - at least for me. So for an authentic look behind the myths, and a compassionate examination of human nature under harsh dog-eat-dog conditions, this carefully researched and powerful novel by Mary Doria Russell - an author new to me - is highly recommended.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

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